TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT

Federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra spoke at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada on Friday and his message was one that should be familiar to Nextgov readers: He spoke abstractly of making government more open to innovation and specifically emphasized the importance of standards in health information technology.

However, the most interesting part of the speech came when Consumer Electronics Association chief Gary Shapiro took a swipe at Chopra and the federal government, implying that the the latter often stands in the way of technology firms attempting to innovate. From the BBC:

"When it comes to innovation there's a lot the government can do, and there's a lot they should not do," said consumer industry head Gary Shapiro.

"The government doesn't spur innovation or entrepreneurship. The government often gets in the way," said Mr Shapiro.

. . . "High taxes and regulatory bureaucracy are barriers."

In response, Mr Chopra said the CEA's criticisms had some weight.

"We don't have to agree on every issue, but we can always say we have room for improvement to spur innovation and entrepreneurship," said Mr. Chopra during a CES press conference.

"We have to eat our own dogfood -- Gary is right about the federal deficit. We are in an economic crisis but we are going to tackle it. We have to get this right," Mr Chopra told journalists.

He said the US government was planning a summit with a number of chief executives from the "most innovative companies in the country to directly advise us to make government more efficient and more effective".

Chopra also said the government's ability to spur the economy is limited:

"We always have room for improvement," Chopra said. "At the end of the day, the private sector is what creates jobs."

Interesting quote from a senior official in an Administration that may be preparing a second stimulus plan precisely because it believes that the government can create jobs.

Since his campaign President Obama has repeatedly emphasized how he wants to attract a more diverse group of Americans into public service. Yesterday he advanced that goal by appointing Amanda Simpson to be senior technical advisor to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security. Amanda Simpson, formerly a test pilot known as Mitchell Simpson, is the first openly-transgendered presidential appointee in history.

From the New York Daily News:

"As one of the first transgender presidential appointees to the federal government, I hope that I will soon be one of hundreds," Simpson said in a statement.

Simpson, 49, underwent a sex change about a decade ago while working in Tuscon for Raytheon Missile Systems, where she rose to the job of deputy director.

President Obama named Simpson to the Commerce post.

It is not certain whether she is the first transgendered presidential appointee, but she appears to be the most prominent.

In 2004, Simpson became the first openly transgendered candidate to win a primary election in the U.S. in a bid for the Arizona state legislature.

A Democrat, she lost in the general election.

Simpson however, is not so keen to be the trend-setter in this area:

"Being the first sucks," she told ABC News.com. "I'd rather not be the first but someone has to be first, or among the first. I think I'm experienced and very well qualified to deal with anything that might show up because I've broken barriers at lots of other places and I always win people over with who I am and what I can do."

While it certainly can't be easy to take on a high-pressure job with these types of distractions, it does seem like Simpson is well-suited for the role. Just by accepting the position and discussing her sexual identity with the media, Simpson is providing hope to countless transgendered people across the nation who may also aspire to serve their country at some point in the future. That's a noble goal for any American, regardless of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation.

Like any publication scrambling to fill those dark days at the end of the year, InformationWeek handed out its annual awards in December.And there was one name included on the list that may come as a surprise to Nextgov readers: Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, who was named "Chief of the Year" by the magazine:

The job of opening the government's databases to the public -- complicated by the need to ensure security, privacy, confidentiality and data quality -- is huge, and Kundra will be the first to admit that most of the work lies ahead. In fact, that's true for everything on his plate: reducing the number of federal data centers, transitioning government agencies to cloud services, bolstering cybersecurity, improving IT project performance, and engaging the public over the Web.

With such a long, unfinished to-do list, you might say that we're premature in naming Kundra InformationWeek's Chief of the Year. But that's where we landed, and here's why: The federal CIO, now nine months into the job, has demonstrated a compelling vision for overhauling the government's lumbering IT operations (with 71,000 federal IT workers and more than 10,000 IT systems), and his progress is so far impressive.

Kundra, for example, has put the feds out in front of many private sector companies in the move to cloud computing. The Data.gov site has grown from just 47 data sets when introduced in May to more than 115,000 today. And the recently launched federal IT Dashboard--a display of IT project status that corporations would do well to mimic--has not only given the public visibility into the performance of Uncle Sam's big-ticket IT projects, but put agency CIOs on notice that execution matters.

Judging by that opening, it seems that InformationWeek tagged Kundra for what he has promised to do rather than what he has actually done. Of course that's pretty much how everyone has treated the Obama administration so far when it comes to IT, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. But still, by my count this year Kundra has been placed on administrative leave within a week of taking office, had his academic record and technical expertise publicly questioned and had embarrassing details of his "youthful indiscretions" picked up by the Associated Press. Not exactly a banner year.

But let's review: Kundra gets credit for significantly increasing the transparency of federal IT investments, despite the fact that he has done no such thing to date. (Not to mention the questionable success of his cost-cutting efforts as chief technology officer of the DC government). Right on cue, Data.gov and the IT Dashboard are mentioned, even though in the vast majority of the data posted on both sites has been available online for years. And of course the IT Dashboard data has been questioned by everyone from the Hill to the Government Accountability Office. But hey, at least it's better looking than USASpending!

After a long wait, the country finally has it's first cybersecurity czar in the person of Howard Schmidt. Like most of the experts, having interviewed Schmidt I'm well aware the depth of his experience and expertise in this area. But any federal manager is only as good as the people who support him, which is why I was very interested to see this report from Jason Miller of FedNewsRadio about his potential deputy:

Multiple sources say the next piece to the puzzle could be a staff member from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Sources say Sameer Bhalotra is a leading candidate to be deputy cyber coordinator.

"Sameer interviewed with the White House earlier this year, but I don't think a decision has been made," says one source, who like the others requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of personnel announcements.

According to his bio, Bhalotra received an undergraduate degree in Physics and Chemistry from Harvard University and a doctorate in Applied Physics from Stanford University.

He also worked with the CIA in the science and technology directorate and developed new cross-community technology programs as a founding member of the science and technology staff within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Bhalotra also was a member of the Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency.

Bhalotra has been with the Senate Intelligence Committee since 2007 where he has focused on cybersecurity and leads the committee's cyber study team.

"Sameer knows how to get stuff done," says another source. "That is the type of person that this position needs."

Bhalotra certainly appears to have the right background for the job, since the intelligence community will undoubtedly be playing huge role in the re-shaping of federal cybersecurity policy next year. Hopefully if chosen his experience working with the Hill will prove valuable as he and Schmidt work to raise the profile and awareness of cybersecurity as a political and governmental issue.

Today's news that technicians have located 22 million missing Bush administration e-mails will be rightly viewed as a victory for the transparency community, particularly the two organizations that pursued the lawsuit. Failing to install an electronics record keeping system will go down as another failure for the Bush administration, albeit a relatively minor one.

Of course, the Bush White House was not exactly known for its commitment to transparency, unlike the current occupants. So a similar failure by President Obama would be much bigger news and much more likely to provoke a backlash among his supporters. That's why the administration issued a solicitation in September for technology to capture all comments, postings and content made my White House employees via social media platforms. At this point we haven't heard anything regarding that search, but my colleague Aliya Sternstein reported recently that the administration is struggling with the other half of the equation: archiving public comments made on White House sites.

The Obama administration also is much more reliant on technology than its predecessors, so it will be interesting to see how they will archive what will undoubtedly be a much higher volume of e-mails, comments and text messages. The availability of external communications tools also may make it tempting for staff members to circumvent controlled systems for purposes of official communication, even though doing so landed the Bush administration in hot water. That's why extra vigilance will be required from all parties.

So far it looks like the administration is attempting to address the problem by limiting staff members' access to technology. From Ben Smith:

At the very end of this educational White House video, a glimpse of the basket into which cabinet members dump their blackberries, and where they occasionally forget them...

...Instant messaging has gone from the place where (for reporters) campaigns dueled on a minute-to-minute basis to a form where the White House is, for fear of creating embarrassing records, silent. And top national security aides, in particular, spend much of the day in secure spaces where Blackberries are banned.

CNN has the picture.

Smith argues that the technology limitations of the White House (no instant messaging, no Twitter, no National Security Aides on Blackberries) are costing the White House politically because, well, they can't constantly stay in contact with people like Ben Smith. And he may be correct if you judge the administration's success on their ability to control the 24/7 media cycle within the Beltway. But the public is also likely to judge the Administration on how they handle the task of governing and the "White House bubble" as Smith calls it is undoubtedly an example of good governance.

There is little to be gained by allow national security officials to tweet about their whereabouts (or even inane topics like their lunch preferences). Likewise, any communications between reporters and White House officials via instant messaging would be subject to the Presidential Records Act and therefore by definition on the record, eliminating this town's two favorite modes of interaction with the press: off the record or on background. So it's unlikely any White House staffers would divulge anything sensitive over the medium, unless they were planning on circumventing the archival laws. Like the Bush administration.

But as President Obama has repeated many times, he is not his predecessor and he intends on running a much more open Administration that complies with both the letter and intent of transparency laws like the Presidential Records Act. So that means we don't get the instant gratification of seeing low-level Obama press aides tweet snarky responses to the latest Matt Taibbi piece. Even transparency has its price.